Friday, April 29, 2011

Oscar-Winning Filmmaker To Direct Movie About Julian Assange

By Jerry Smith Apr 29 2011
assangewatch.blogspot.com

Charles Ferguson, the oscar-winning documentary filmmaker has signed on to direct the HBO Films' movie about Julian Assange, if the project gets the go ahead.
Ferguson directed and produced 'No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq' (2007) and 'Inside Job' (2010). 'Inside Job', which looked at the causes of the Wall Street meltdown of 2008, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2011.

The movie, which will be the oscar winning directors first non documentary film, will be co-produced with the BBC, and even though it does not have a writer yet, it will supposedly be based on Raffi Khatchadourian's June 7, 2010, article in The New Yorker 'No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency'.

The article by Khatchadourian follows Assange and some other WikiLeaks supporters as they prepared to publish 'Collateral Murder', the roughly half hour classified video, filmed from inside the cockpit of an U.S. Army Apache Helicopter, which shows American soldiers killing at least eighteen people, including two Reuters journalists.

The film is being executive produced by Alixandre Witlin and Joshua Maurer from City Entertainment and David Stern from KippSter Entertainment. Ferguson's producing partner Audrey Marrs, is also on board to produce the movie.

There are other movies about Assange in the works from Universal and DreamWorks. Dreamworks bought the rights to 'Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website', written by former WikiLeaks member Daniel Domscheit-Berg and 'WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy', written by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

Assange, who is still under house arrest at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, Britain, will continue to fight being extradited to Sweden at a two day hearing at the High Court in London on July 12 and 13.

Assange has been fighting extradition to Sweden where he has not been charged with anything but is wanted for questioning by the Swedish police about accusations of rape and sexual molestation made against him by Sofia Wilen and Anna Ardin. Assange denies the allegations and says he had consensual sex with the two women.

Assange and his lawyers fear that if he is extradited to Sweden he may then be extradited to the United States, where he could face torture, confinement at Guantanamo Bay, both, or even the death penalty.

Assange angered the United States when the leaked embarrassing diplomatic cables, the classified documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the 'Collateral Murder' video were published.